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Carrie Fisher To Appear In ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Without CGI

Carrie Fisher as General Leia-Solo in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (credit: Disney•Lucasfilm)

By David Morgan

(CBS NEWS) – Carrie Fisher, who died last December after filming her role as Princess Leia in “Star Wars: Episode XIII,” will return to the screen for “Episode IX,” but without the filmmakers resorting to computer-generated FX.

The New York Daily News reports that Todd Fisher confirmed that his family has given permission to Disney and Lucasfilm to use recent footage of Carrie in “Episode IX.”

Unlike last year’s “Rogue One,” in which CGI was used to create a younger version of Princess Leia, and to bring back the late Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, computer-generated effects will not be used to recreate Fisher’s character.

Attending the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles, Todd Fisher said he and Carrie’s daughter, Billie Lourd, agreed that Princess Leia should return. “Both of us were like, ‘Yes, how do you take her out of it?’ And the answer is you don’t.”

“She’s as much a part of it as anything,” he told the Daily News, “and I think her presence now is even more powerful than it was, like Obi Wan — when the [light] saber cuts him down he becomes more powerful. I feel like that’s what’s happened with Carrie. I think the legacy should continue.”

After Fisher’s death, at age 60, there has been much speculation how Leia would figure in the next film, titled “The Last Jedi,” which premieres December 15, 2017. It was previously reported that she had completed filming her scenes, but her fate in subsequent Star Wars films was unsure, except for a promise by Disney not to digitally recreate her.

Fisher said he did not know how Leia would factor into the story of “Episode IX,” due out in 2019, but said that Star Wars fans “deserve to have her.”